Akkam’s Razor

• Map: Show Me the TARP Money – ProPublica – Each marker represents the headquarters of a financial institution that expects or has already received money from the Treasury Department under the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). The size of each marker represents the amount of bailout money given to each institution. Click on the markers to see the institution’s name and amount it’s receiving.
• I’m Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq – washingtonpost.com – We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”
• Schneier on Security: Communications During Terrorist Attacks are <i>Not</i> Bad – This fear is exactly backwards. During a terrorist attack — during any crisis situation, actually — the one thing people can do is exchange information. It helps people, calms people, and actually reduces the thing the terrorists are trying to achieve: terror. Yes, there are specific movie-plot scenarios where certain public pronouncements might help the terrorists, but those are rare. I would much rather err on the side of more information, more openness, and more communication.
• All Spin Zone » White Supremacist Republicans Unite! – This is sweet. A man in a very strongly Jewish part of Florida was elected, even though he is vehemently anti-Jewish. The Republicans are moving to get rid of the guy, but they seem not to have the power to do so. Hey, if they really were against such virulent racism, they’d be able to kick this guy out of their party easily. That’s the problem. They simply have no stance against racism, and thus they are stuck with him.
• Editorial Cartoons by John Sherffius News : Boulder Daily Camera – Barry Ritholtz points to cartoonist John Sheriffus' work.
• How to Design a Bailout That Works | The Big Picture – The answer is that the crisis is not about the amount of losses yet realised or yet to be realised, and it is not about capital adequacy of the banks and it is not about their level of leverage. It is simply about the question “do we trust them to repay their debts”. You might think is about capital or losses or leverage – but even if the bank has adequate capital and losses come are relatively small if we believe collectively that they can’t repay then they can’t repay. Sure more capital would produce more trust – but the level of distrust at the moment is so high that nobody can tell you how much capital is needed. All estimates are a shot in the dark. In reality all that is needed is more trust.
• Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales | The Big Picture – A few things you can count on every year around this time:

  1. Sales data for Black Friday will be touted by biased interest groups. They are invariably have an upside bias;
  2. Headline writers will get it wrong
  3. Survey data will be taken as the equivalent of actual sales; 4. Strong forecasts will be subsequently proven wrong; .

  Such is the current situation with the Black Friday sales data, with reports still trickling in from around the country.

• Top 100 Philadelphia Moments: #10 to #1 – Philadelphia Magazine – phillymag.com – A cheesesteak? Really? That's the best we can do?
• ‘Liar’s Poker’ Author Sees Upside To Market Crash : NPR – The collapse of the subprime-mortgage bond market is different from the general run of modern financial panics in this respect: It involves millions of blissfully oblivious people
  [...].
  It wasn't only big Wall Street firms but a lot of small real estate speculators—otherwise known as homeowners—who, in effect, sold put options too cheaply against the risk of extreme, rare events. That many of these people literally live inside the investment that they've speculated on sharpens the pain but fails to drive home the point. Financial panics have become almost commonplace; events that are meant to occur once in a millennium now seem to occur every few years. Could this be because the financial system was built on an idea that badly underestimates the risk of catastrophes—and so conspires with human nature to create them?
• How to Save the World: What You Can Do, Now, to Help Obama, and All-Life-On-Earth – What you need to do in order for change to occur…
• 20 Free Corporate WordPress Themes | Blogging Tips from Blogsessive –

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